EVANSVILLE - Opposing armies of lawyers armed with laptop computers, exhibit boards and boxes and binders full of files set out Wednesday to end a six-year legal dispute over whether Alcoa's dumping of waste at a former Warrick County coal mine caused the cancer of a former miner there.

Even if it did, Alcoa attorney Tom Birsic told jurors, the company isn't responsible, because the miner was exposed on the job at Squaw Creek mine and not through outdoor recreation as the lawsuit claims.

That would make it a worker compensation claim, he said.

Six Warrick County jurors will sort through conflicting paperwork and expert testimony to decide the case, which Birsic said could result in "millions and millions and millions of dollars" paid to Bil and Kim Musgrave if they win.

The Chandler, Ind., couple filed the lawsuit in January 2006 in Warrick County. However, the trial, which is expected to last several weeks, is being held in Vanderburgh

County, with Circuit Court Judge Carl Heldt presiding as special judge.

Musgrave, then 44, was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in 2000. Peter Racher, his lawyer, described it as a rare and often fatal form of liver cancer.

"It is one of the most aggressively fatal cancers known to medicine," he said.

Although a doctor gave him just months to live, Musgrave was accepted for treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and received a liver transplant in August 2001.

"The life that Bil has, as you will learn, is a diminished one," Racher said. "The future is not something for the Musgraves to look forward to with much excitement. The future for the Musgraves is something ominous."

Even with the medicines he takes to keep his body from rejecting the transplanted liver and keep up his health, Musgrave's life is marred by extreme weakness and fatigue, sudden onsets of unexplainable vomiting, inability to sit still for long periods and decreased kidney function, Racher said.

He said the couple fear the cancer will return or that another illness will develop, and that Kim Musgrave will develop cancer from her own exposures to the waste.

Birsic countered that jurors should look past their sympathy for the Musgraves and focus on evidence he says absolves Alcoa.

"The facts, the science, the medicine and the law all point to a different direction, a direction that says, yes, we feel sympathy for Mr. Musgrave and his situation, but Alcoa is simply not responsible," Birsic said.

Alcoa was a joint owner of the 8,000-acre Squaw Creek Minenorth of Boonville, Ind., and about 15 miles east of Evansville. Mining there ceased in 1987.

Both sides agreed the mine was operated to supply coal to power Alcoa Warrick Operations and that Alcoa dumped large amounts of industrial waste there from 1965 to 1979, including coal tar pitch, spent pot linings from its aluminum smelting and a sludge which contained chromium.

They disagree, though, on whether the waste was hazardous, the dump locations, what Alcoa did about it and whether state officials knew.

Racher said evidence will show Alcoa knew the waste was dangerous and dumping it was illegal. He cited several company memos and letters supporting the assertion.

Birsic showed other letters indicating Alcoa had been in contact with state officials about it and had state approval.

"The state was aware of what we were doing out there. It was no secret," he said.

According to Racher, some of the waste contained chemical compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, which he said cause cancer.

"These are some of the most powerful cancer-causing substances known to science," he said.

He told the jury that PAHs are also found in tobacco smoke and that an expert will testify that Musgrave was exposed to the equivalent of several packs of cigarettes every day for 35 years.

Birsic painted a different picture.

"Not a single one of the hundreds of studies have ever identified any of these substances as a known cause of this disease," he said.

Birsic told the jury Musgrave's own doctor from the Mayo Clinic could not scientifically say that the chemicals caused his cancer. He urged the jury not to rush to judgment before hearing Alcoa's evidence, which could still be a week away.